The writer of our story from John this morning clearly wants us to see Mary and Judas as contrasting examples from whom a lesson is to be learned. Obviously, Mary is the positive example, receiving Jesus’ praise, support, and protection, and Judas is the negative example receiving Jesus’ rebuke, and the narrator’s harsh condemnation. And the challenge for us, the hearers of this story, is that you and I really have much more in common with Judas than with Mary (not the stealing part, though maybe you steal I don’t know, I haven’t done much stealing in my lifetime, and I would guess that you probably haven’t either). But it is other thinking that we share with Judas that makes this story feel uncomfortable.
Now I am not as judgmental as the writer of this story is. I don’t see us as bad people because we are more like Judas than Mary. I don’t even see Judas as a bad person. He certainly must have been attracted to something that Jesus was doing and saying, or he wouldn’t have been a part of his inner circle. Jesus must have seen the potential in Judas, because he called Judas into his inner circle. I am not a providential thinker. I don’t believe that it was pre-ordained by God that Judas be in Jesus’ inner circle simply so that he could betray Jesus for the purpose of Jesus being crucified and raised from the dead. I think that God would not treat any human being as an expendable cog in a machine, which is what this explanation of Judas’ presence in the story of Jesus makes him. What I believe is that Judas was a person of mixed motives just like you and me. He was a person who was seeking peace and happiness like all of us are. And he was a product of the world in which he lived. What Jesus offered him was a completely different way of living, moving, and having his being in the world and in the end, this proved too much for Judas. He just couldn’t let go of the way the world taught him to live and move and have his being. That is the true tragedy of Judas. He had at his fingertips a way of living and moving and having his being that would have given him all that he truly needed and desired and yet he let it slip away.
Isn’t this the dilemma we who are also seeking to follow Jesus also face? We too want a life of shalom, of peace and happiness, and we too are confused about how to find this peace and happiness. We sense in the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that there is a way to live and move and have our being that is very different from the way the world has taught us to live and move and have our being. And this new way will meet unmet needs in our lives. However, the ways of the world have formed our ways of thinking to such an extent that we believe that the way things are is the way things have to be. The way things are is the only way things can be. And yet, we hold out hope that the way things are could change. Maybe, just maybe, the way things are could be different. And so, we keep following Jesus. But we aren’t quite willing yet to let go of the lens through which we are used to seeing and understanding the world.
And what lens am I talking about? Well, I’m talking about the lenses of abundance and scarcity. We have been taught that the world we live in is a world in which scarcity is reality. In such a world it only makes sense to hoard and stockpile in order to protect ourselves from such scarcity. Everything has a monetary price, a value that can be quantified. Perfume that is difficult to obtain is worth a lot and therefore should be hoarded and not dumped out on one human being, no matter how special that human being is. Just think about how many people that perfume could be used to feed or how much security it could give to the one who possessed it. In a world of scarcity, it is illogical to use all of that valuable perfume to anoint the feet of one person, even if that person is probably facing his death. Indeed, it might even be called immoral. What has value is what can be monetized. What cannot be monetized has little or no value.
As a result, things like human relationships get devalued because they cannot be monetized. We sometimes try to monetize relationships, but when we do they lose the essence of the what makes them relationships. You don’t have the same relationship with a prostitute as your spouse, or a therapist as your friend who provided a listening ear, or a babysitter as your beloved aunt who cares for you for free. You may have some needs met in these monetized relationships, but the presence of money changes these relationships and lessens them. There are some things that money just can’t buy. Money can be used to purchase almost everything we need—calories to sustain our bodies, healthcare when we are ill, housing and clothing to protect us from the elements, labor to clean our houses, mow our lawns, and cook our food, games to play in our leisure time, power to control our world. But notice what is not in the list—love, relationship, connection, beauty, meaning, purpose that matters, connection to God. Money can help us survive, but does it enable us to thrive? And is scarcity really reality? Or is it a human-created construct? Is there really not enough of what everyone needs on this earth for survival, or do some have more than they need while others do not have enough? Are the fundamentals needed to sustain life really in such short supply or have we humans simply made it so? In a world in which scarcity is believed to be reality it is true that the there will always be poor people. But is this the only way the world can be?
I believe the answer is “no” and that this is what Jesus is trying to show us in his life, death, and resurrection. He stands up to the way the world is, the way we presume it has to be, to show us that there is another way, and that way is God’s way. Jesus shows us that in God’s kingdom there is abundance, there is enough for everyone. But to be a part of this abundant world we must radically transform the way we live and move and have our being. And well, this is hard, this is more than hard, and incredibly scary because it means letting go of all we have been taught will give us security and make us good and valuable people.
Did you know that modern-day hunter-gatherers work about 20-30 hours per week to provide for their basic survival needs, food, clothing, shelter and the like? Now some say, “well so what they also die young.” But once you control for their high infant morality rate, modern-day hunter-gathers typically live into their late 60’s and early 70’s. Certainly modern medical knowledge has lowered the infant-morality rate and lengthened our lives. That is good. But you could also ask to what end? So that we can work long hours at jobs that are often servile and demeaning? Hunter-gathers spend the time they are not working in connecting with one another, telling stories, and honing traditional skills. All deeply satisfying pursuits that also meet deep human needs. I don’t think they would describe their lives as short, difficult, and brutal, even though we see them that way. Indeed, they might question the brutal life of someone working 60 or 70 hours a week in a mine or a meatpacking plant who still doesn’t have enough money to buy food or pay the rent.
Now, I’m not arguing that we should all return to hunter-gather days or that this is God’s dream for the world, though I do think there is a lot to learn from these societies—the primary lesson being that our way of being in the world is not a given or the way things have to be. Our society is just as much a constructed society as that of the hunter-gathers. And perhaps the way our society is constructed at present is not serving us in all the ways we think that it is serving us. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence that our work-obsessed, money-obsessed, wealth-obsessed, individual-obsessed, and merit-obsessed culture has not brought us the happiness we are looking for. Just as the Roman Empire brought a military peace and great wealth to a few but poverty, struggle and unhappiness to many, so too has European colonialism as spread throughout the world and found primarily represented today in the monetary wealth and military strength of the United States brought a military peace and great wealth to a few and poverty, struggle, and unhappiness to many. I have a seemingly infinite number of choices of commodities I can buy that I am told will make my life easier and more enjoyable, but how many hours do I have to work to pay for these commodities? How much debt do I have to take on and repay to have these things? And what about the environmental costs of many of these commodities that I can buy? Or the human cost? What about the laborers in Vietnam who had to work in slave-like conditions to make my shoes? So, I have a dishwasher that saves me about 5 hours of work a week and will last about 7 years. Have I really been freed up to spend five hours each week focusing on important things like relationships, connecting with God and creating beautiful things? Or instead, do end up using those five hours working more to pay my debt and buy more commodities?
So, let’s put on the lens of abundance. If we operate from a reality of abundance, hoarding becomes illogical. If there are enough of the basic necessities for everyone, then what good does it do me to stockpile anything, especially when someone else needs what I have in excess. The hunter-gatherer does not stockpile excess meat from a larger than needed hunt, because what good would that do him. He shares it with his neighbors. And then down the road, when his neighbor has excess meat from a large hunt, he will share it with his neighbors in turn. An Amish person does not need to get homeowner’s insurance because he knows that if his house or barn burns down, his neighbors will help him rebuild, just as he has helped them rebuild in the past. Our abundance comes from our relationships with one another. A society or economy of abundance is one in which its members readily give and receive, and capital accumulates in the form of relationships not monetary wealth.
Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol demonstrates well the difference in seeing the world through a lens of scarcity verses a lens of abundance. Ebenezer Scrooge is the villain who holds as tightly to his accumulated wealth as he can, and we cheer when he is converted to letting go of his miserly ways by his nighttime visitors. But in a culture of scarcity are Scrooge’s actions really so illogical? But in a world of abundance, his actions make no sense at all, for they destroy connection, relationship, and beauty. And it is in that world of abundance where peace and happiness are found.
In a culture of scarcity, it makes sense to slash away at the Federal budget without giving any thought to the lives that are being negatively affected in the process. After all, in a culture of scarcity the goal for everyone is to keep as much for themselves as they can. So, slash the budget. Lower taxes. Hope that if the rich are able to accumulate more, they might create a job that will help me survive. After all, in this culture it is every human for themselves. Less for you will mean more for me. The goal after all is saving money so it can be accumulated. That is the good toward which we are all working right?
Jesus saw the world through the lens of abundance, and he lived as though abundance and not scarcity was what was real and true. As far as we can tell, once he started his ministry, he never earned a dime. He had no home. He lived off the gifts of his friends and followers. And they in turn received his gifts. Together they kept a common purse to meet their monetary needs. Mary, whose brother Jesus had brought back to life and who was a close friend of Jesus, had an awareness that Jesus was headed to his death. She has a close connection with Jesus and he with her. She showed her love for him in a dramatic and beautiful way. She didn’t count the cost. She didn’t think about the monetary value of the perfume. This was not the way she or Jesus viewed the world. She just acted and showed him her love. This act must have been healing and encouraging as Jesus faced what he knew was going to be a terrible death. Perhaps it was her spontaneous, loving and courageous act that gave Jesus the courage to do what he needed to do? We don’t know, but we do know that her act and his reception of her generous gift had nothing to do with money and scarcity and everything to do with abundance and love. Judas couldn’t understand this because he couldn’t abandon the scarcity lens through which he viewed the world.
Do we live in a world of abundance or scarcity? How you answer this question will determine how you live and move and have your being. In a world of scarcity, we will always have poverty, we will always have some who accumulate a lot while others do not have enough. In a world of abundance, resources naturally flow from the one who has too much to the one who has too little, because we know that when we do not have enough someone will share their excess with us. Jesus is calling us to imagine such a world, for we cannot be what we cannot imagine. Mary caught Jesus’ vision, and she could not help but pour out her love in response to the healing of her brother, her friendship with Jesus, and his impending death. It was the only logical response. Judas did not catch Jesus’ vision and all he could see was the pouring out of perfume that could be monetized and stockpiled. What might it be like to see the world through the lens of abundance and to live and move and have our being from this way of seeing? I wonder. Amen.
